Karolina Kauppi

I am a senior researcher (docent in neuroscience) in the field of neurogenetics of cognitive aging, as well as major psychiatric disorders.

I am also affiliated with Umeå University.

My current multi-omics projects focus on the role for genetic pathways and protein-based biomarkers in plasma for the development of age-related cognitive impairment and dementia. Alzheimer's disease (AD), our most common form of dementia, is highly heritable and polygenic. By calculating pathway-based polygenic risk scores for AD, we study how groups of genes with biologically similar functions influences disease risk, and underlying disease processes, such as peripheral inflammation, cognitive decline, and brain structure and function. 

In this work, we use data from the Betula project (Umeå University), a prospective longitudinal cohort study on aging, healthy and dementia, that we have recently enriched with proteomics data from Olink, including a total of 1536 protein markers from four panels: cardiometabolics, oncology, neurology, and inflammation. The proteomics data include baseline data for n=1081 participants, of which longitudinal proteomics data is available for 568 participants (ten years follow-up time). We use omics and cognitive data from the Swedish Twin registry for replication of results. 

I also collaborate on projects related to genetic risk factors of major psychiatric disorders, including Schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, including studies of biological aging in bipolar disorder, using measures of telomere length.